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Time Travel...........Why'd It Have To Be Time Travel?

Goddamn, is this book all over the place. Not only do we have to deal with the constant delays that make remembering what happened the issue before almost impossible, but we've got individual stories of each of the Justice League members that range throughout time and space......... Plus, there's a god involved and whenever anyone involves a god, shit always gets complicated. So yeah, I guess I'll just run off what everyone in this book is doing in their attempt to stop Rao....... or for some of them, they're just like us because they're just trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Okay, we've got Flash in 1961 with that mysterious Infinity Corporation and their wanna-be Infinity Stones, Superman got his ass kicked by Rao, Batman and Cyborg are attempting to find a way to stop the vampire god, Green Lantern is two hundred and fifty thousand years in the past on Krypton, hanging out with a young Rao and Wonder Woman and Aquaman might have been blown up when Rao's prophets made their way to the remnants of Olympus and went all kamikazi on our heroes. Yeah, so overall shit is fucking weird and I don't see it getting much clearer. Let's jump into this issue and see how confused we can get here. Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Alright............. where to begin? In case you forgot, Batman in a previous issue took out one of Rao's prophets in a hospital and I guess he decided to take the attending doctor with him when he went back to Star Labs to see if Cyborg could hack into the staff he acquired........ which Cyborg can and surprisingly there wasn't any adverse affects to our cybernetic hero, but even more surprising is the fact that this stray doctor that Batman brought along for the ride seems to be giving us all the exposition about Rao's modus operandi in sucking the lives out of the people who worship him and somehow she knows exactly what taking the "life energy" of people would mean in terms of power........... it's all very strange and the only reason I see this as part of the story besides for our heroes getting an ace up their sleeves in finding a way to spy on Rao and maybe sneaking into one of his cathedrals, is that they use the staff and Cyborg's hacking abilities to find out that Superman is being held by the mad god.

Elsewhere, we see that Wonder Woman and Aquaman survived Olympus' explosion by......... well, by Wonder Woman saying over and over again that she is Olympus......... Yeah, not much of an explanation, but we do get her talking about everyone getting an invitation to fight Parasite in the first issue, all except Aquaman that is and I'm left wondering if that actually meant something or if it was just a way to explain away everyone disappearing in their different ways. We do find out that Wonder Woman actually disappearing into Olympus was because Parasite tapped into her energy........ but I don't know how that works exactly and with her staying in the ruins that were once the home of the gods for so much of this series and her continuously saying in this issue that she is Olympus.......... well, I kind of figured that she needed to stay there until another god maybe showed up and relieved her, but that's wrong too because now she's arming herself and Aquaman with the weapons of the gods to go take on Rao and I'm just confused as hell to what's actually going on with all of our heroes in this series.

In the end, we have a weird ass installment to what Green Lantern is up to, when him and the young Rao go into the Argo Citadel, only to find the Infinity Corporation and once they go inside there it just gets weirder. So inside, they come across the Rao from our present timeline story and apparently he's been defeated and intends on changing things in this past so that they might have a different outcome in the future........... while Green Lantern just keeps saying that he thinks the building they're in is from his time and world.......... good contribution Hal. After that we have a page or two of the what Flash is up to and apparently it's the Infinity Corporation going back in time to where Hal is on Krypton and we finally finish off the story with Superman being tortured and restrained, while giving us more exposition about how Rao is a vampire and not a god........... Good times. As the issue closes though this book becomes at least interesting because since Superman is being held fast in Rao's space ship cathedral, he uses his flying power to move the cathedral into orbit and crashes it into the surface of the moon........... while this is cool in theory, it just doesn't have the impact it should from looking at a static picture of it........ there's just no motion.

That's it for this issue of Justice League of America and........... and...... I don't even know what to do with this series anymore because I'm so beyond confused that I don't even care about what's going on anymore. Yeah, that's a shitty way to look at a series that you review, but I love the Justice League and want to love a book featuring them, but this series just makes that impossible. There is so much going on in this series that you just have to go with on faith because it seems that they'll never be explained and if they do, they'll simply be explained with a simple line or statement from one of our heroes and that's it. "I am Olympus"........... good for you Wonder Woman, but that doesn't help me understand anything that's been going on with you in this series so far. On top of this book being confusing right out of the gate, now we have time travel going on with our villain and it's just thrown at us all willy nilly and at times I forget that this entire story stems from this strange Infinity Corporation plucking dead Supermen out of the future.......... which leads to the end of everything. It's just too much and the disjointed feel of it all just makes me angry by the time I'm done reading the book. I'd like to say the the art is at least fantastic, but I can't........... I mean, it's not terrible and at times it has some really nice scenes, but the style just isn't for me and the last bit of this book with Superman flying the citadel into the moon had no sense of motion towards it and because of this it came off lackluster.

Bits and Pieces:

If you found this story confusing before, well you haven't seen anything yet. So many things are thrown at you in this issue that it's a bit overwhelming and the fact that none of these things are really explained doesn't help with that overwhelming feel either. There's just too much going on between all our different Leaguers and more time travel elements were added here and the only reason I can really see is for all the readers to pull their hair out. While I'll say that the art for the most part is okay, there are certain scenes where I wish someone else was at the helm of the pencils.

Yeah, there were so many plots and heroes in the series, so, figuring out how the stories developed is not an easy thing. anyway, let superheroes hoodies warm you in this cold winter now. With regard to the confused questions, maybe, we will resolve them after reading the complete stories.

Well, we have Past-Rao and Future-Rao in the past revealing that Present-Rao WILL, in fact, be defeated, ruining what little suspense the present-day story had.

Wonder Woman doesn't understand the meaning of "explain" as she just doesn't get that Arthur wants a little more from her than "I am Olympus" (almost like in a "if you don't know, I'm not going to tell you" way. Sigh, women. Can't live with them.)

And, I agree, the scene with Superman flying the ship into the moon is poorly done. He spelled out what he was doing and I still wasn't 100% sure what i was seeing

I REALLY enjoyed the first issue of this series despite its flaws (in a MAN OF STEEL kind of way. It was groan inducing in places but captured the spirit of the character).

I have to say this issue was fantastic, I think many people have mistaken a far spanning story with a messy story. while I'll admit that this story would work better as graphic novel it still works. It reminds a bit of old sweeping Authority stories with the heroes using every element of their powers and abilities. Superman I think is at his best when he's a Goku esque hero challenged by a character who out powers him. him flying the cathedral ship was ridiculous, majestic, and beautiful. despite its delays this is by and far one of my favorite titles and one of the few superhero comics I buy anymore

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